Health reform just hit a potential snag.
The Senate GOP leadership is confirming that the parliamentarian has informed them that the Senate bill must be passed into law before any reconciliation fix is passed — lessening the likelihood that such a fix will actually happen.
"The Senate Parliamentarian's office has informed Senate Republicans that reconciliation instructions require the measure to make changes in law," Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mitch McConnell, emails, confirming an anonymously sourced report in Roll Call.
If this bears out, it would effectively nix one route forward that House Dems had hoped would give them a guarantee of getting the bill fixed later. The hope had been that the House could pass the Senate bill and then get the reconciliation fix done before the whole package were signed into law — a route that would have increased the pressure on the Senate to do a fix.
Now, if the GOP Senate leadership is right, that may no longer be possible. To be clear, the Senate could pass a reconciliation fix after the Senate bill becomes law. But as Ryan Grim notes, there will now be much less pressure to do so.
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